Have you ever wanted to be president? or prime-minister? Convinced you could do a better job of running the country? Let's face it, you could hardly do a worse job than our current political leaders. Crime, Unemployment, National Debt, Terrorism, Climate Change...

October 27, 2014

What challenges are to come for the politicians of the future? Mass unemployment due to the automation of factories? or will this lead to a leisure society and equality? Will ubiquitous drones lead to better law enforcement and less traffic congestion or to widespread crime and infringement of privacy? Should we give the go-ahead to human cloning? will climate change cause problems for our country? Are we going to run out of rare earth metals? or oil...? The people look to YOU for leadership in these turbulent times. Can you keep the country happy and prosperous as we head to the 2020s and beyond?

Clones & Drones adds new dilemmas, policies, events and simulation values to the ultimate political strategy game. Available now for PC/Mac/Linux.

Reviews

“Apparently somewhere between the genuine bona fide electrified six-car monorail, the prostitutes and the land mines, I lost the support of the electorate.”
PC Gamer

“I returned to Democracy 3 in an attempt to put right the wrongs of my previous administration. On my first visit, I broke Britain, crushing its culture and creating a country reminiscent of Clockwork Orange, filled with gangs and ultraviolence.”
Rock Paper Shotgun

About This Game

Have you ever wanted to be president? or prime-minister? Convinced you could do a better job of running the country? Let's face it, you could hardly do a worse job than our current political leaders.

Crime, Unemployment, National Debt, Terrorism, Climate Change...Have you got the answers to the problems that face western industrialized nations? Here is your chance to find out...

An entire virtual country

Democracy 3 simulates the motivations, loyalties and desires of everyone in the country. A custom-designed neural network is used to model individual voters, each which varying memberships of voting groups, political parties and pressure groups. Each voters income is modeled, along with their levels of complacency and cynicism. This is the most sophisticated political strategy game ever created.

Unique user interface

Despite being vastly detailed under-the-hood, Democracy 3 has a unique user interface that makes visualizing the connections between laws, policies, voters and situations easy. A simple iconic-based view of your countries issues allows you to 'drill-down' through all the relationships between policies and voters to quickly analyze the impacts of your decisions. Your trade policy may affect GDP, which will affect unemployment, which will effect poverty, and thus crime, leading to a change in tourism, which affects GDP...

Complex simulated voters

Each individual voter is a mixture of a subset of the 21 different voter groups represented within the game. They might be a young, wealthy, liberal socialist commuter, or a retired conservative religious capitalist, for example. Not only this, but the extent to which they identify each of those groups is both variable, and can be affected by your policies in the long term. Convert your country to religion, or atheism, to capitalism, or socialism by careful and nuanced adjustment of your policies and laws over time. A 'focus group' feature lets you look at individual voters and see exactly how they came to a decision to vote for you (or not!).

Mod Support

Democracy 3 is very configurable and trivial to mod. It also has steam workshop support, for easy installation and browsing of modded content. Want to mod the game yourself? no problem, you need zero coding experience, just a spreadsheet program or a text editor, and we have a full comprehensive modding guide available here:
http://www.positech.co.uk/democracy3/modding.htmlModders can easily edit the policies, add new ones, change the way objects affect others, create entirely new countries, situations and even re-write the entire economic and political model. Everything is editable and accessible.

After a close call I entered office of the U.S of A. with my party, The Sixth Division. I immeidiately raised the army and police forces arming all officers. My ministers and liberals resented me for this and so I replaced them all with hand picked fools to run my government. At this time my popularity was low. I then made the death penalty common for small crimes and made sure all police officers were armed with submachine guns. I then saw that a group called the Black Power Group were starting to hate me and so I passed a race discrimination act making sure rascism is illegal. I then made joining the army mandatory and increased the borders and spy networks to the maximum. After surviving five assasination attempts from the socialist party thanks to my secret spy network, the "Hapstepo" a group of black extremists broke into my office with machine guns killing me and everyone in my party and on my board. Very, fun. 10/10 Great game!

+ Incredible amount of depth+ Sound bites are enjoyable, and not so prevalent that you become annoyed+ UI, while at first daunting, allows for tons of functionality; the minimalist design is crisp and visually pleasing

+/- The occasional large decisions that must be made at the end of the turn do not display possible effects; it's not made clear what kind of impact your decisions will have

First impressions aren't great - this game has so much depth that the interface can be very confusing. The tutorial helps... a bit, but the best trick is to play your first game on 50% difficulty. After that, you will understand the mechanics of the game better and can dive in with gusto again and again. And you'll want to do just that. After all, everyone knows that politicians are self-serving idiots and that we could do a better job armed with nothing more than common sense, don't we? You can build a fairer country or guarantee jobs for all. Rapidly though you find that running a country is more like weaving and pulling one thread taut will cause something else unravel unexpectedly. The game balance is great, nothing feels random, just complex. With numerous countries to run, each with their own problems and opportunities, plus workshop expansions, this game just keeps on giving. All the depth of the best of the SimCity game, without the unecessary graphical frippery.

The question between liberal policies and conservative policies, and which one is actually the right solution is finally solved in an understated and minimal game. The answer is: it doesn't matter because you're going to be assassinated. The only question is, will it be the out-of-work stock brokers or the angry unemployed black seperatists. Doesn't matter - you're dead.

The game is fun, but truth be told, I think Im actually playing an excel spreadsheet with a very snappy UI.

Oddly enough, this one is not about invading oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.

Successfully ruling a country means juggling hundreds of factors in an effort to satisfy most of your citizens and evetually get re-elected. The trick lies in somehow dodging the very real possibility of running your country into the ground by failing economically, socially or politically, which despite the rather clear interface and streamlined mechanics is no easy job. Extreme failure in navigating the political landscape can even get you assassinated, which I believe isn't even the worst outcome, all things considered. So there you have it, Democracy 3 is a remarkably complex yet approachable game designed to challenge your gray matter.

P.S. I will not get in political arguments. I will not get in political arguments. I will not get in political arguments. I will not get in political arguments. I will not get in political arguments. I will not get in political arguments. I will not get in political arguments. You get the picture.

This is a fun little game that locks you down in a cycle of 'just one more turn'-type addictiveness.

I say 'little' because I wouldn't pay full price for it. Despite the amount of work that clearly had to go into balancing all the different variables of this game, there's not a whole great deal of gameplay when you get down it it. After some initial touch-and-go difficulty, I made it through my first election, and from then on it was a pretty steady rise until I'm 10 terms in, with no unemployment, no poverty, 100% of the vote and the highest possible GDP. I say this not to brag, but merely to demonstrate that you can ace this game on the first try.

In saying that, it took me 6 hours, which is as long as a CoD campaign and they ask $90 bucks for that. And it was nice to turn Australia into a profitable yet compassionate and sustainable nation.

Even so, I can't justify spending $20 on something that you can buy on the app store for your phone. But for the sale price, it's wonderful. I'd highly recommend getting the DLC, by the way, as without it, I'd feel like there was too little content, even for the sale price.

You reach a point were there are no problems, you make money and have a large reserve and win elections with upwards of 95% of the vote going your way.

At this point the problems the game throws at you are repeating and no threat whatsoever.There will be a market Meltdown every few rounds to try to ruin your budget, but it won't.

You can choose which country you want to govern, but it feels like it doesn't make any difference.Examples of this include there only being a two Party system in countries that have a multiparty parliament,also little details like having to deciede wether or not to raise the general speed limit when playing Germany, a country that famously doesn't have a general speed limit.

This game can be fun for a few hours, but to me feels unfinished and massively lacks attention to detail

Democracy 3 is a turn-based strategy game stripped down to its barest elements. Think Civilization V but without the world map. Democracy eschews almost all visual flare in favor of numbers, charts, and graphs. As a government simulator, it makes sense that most of your time is spent pouring over facts and figures, even if that seems to fly in the face of video game logic. It also makes sense that you never actually see the people you are governing. They are problems to be solved: approval ratings, social malfunctions, tax revenue. You never see the drunk or the homeless but know they exist because they’re no good for the bottom line.Assessing your nation - France, Germany, U.S., Australia, or the UK - takes place on one of the most convoluted user interfaces I have ever seen. More than five dozen bubbles litter the screen, broken up into different colors and key sections such as Tax, Economy, Law & Order, and so on. White bubbles represent policies, blue bubbles provide data on the impact of those policies, and red bubbles are situations requiring your attention.Changing a policy requires political capital which is refreshed at the start of every turn. Making a big decision requires more capital, so you won’t be legalizing abortion and removing the cigarette tax in a single turn. Political capital is used to institute new policies in the same way. Adjusting those you start out with is interesting, adding more of your own is even more fun.Experimenting with policies creates a ripple effect on your constituency. More than twenty groups of voters dynamically react to your decisions, raising and lowering your approval rating. Members of your cabinet might also become disloyal and need to be replaced. Radicals might even try to kill you.As a government simulator, Democracy 3 does a remarkable job. Its presentation and wealth of data truly makes you feel like a world leader.For every moment of fun strategizing and eager anticipation there was an equal moment spent wishing the experience was more user friendly. I felt like a president, just as promised, but I was also reminded of why I would never want the job in the first place.Democracy 3 is a game for the politically-minded. It favors substance over flair. Some players might love the added analysis required for each turn but others will find it wearing out far sooner than it probably should. The denseness of Democracy 3’s presentation is its biggest barrier and it leaves one wondering why: Was this really the best way to deliver what, at its heart, is so similar to games like Civilization? For this iteration, it seems so. If you are willing to climb the hill and submerse yourself in numbers and graphs, this might be the game for you. If not, it is probably best avoided.